I know it’s been a while, I’m sorry to leave anyone hanging, I did not intend to abandon my blog for so long. I have been very busy while I was away from writing, I promise! One of the last things I wrote before I went on hiatus this past summer has just been published, thanks to my brilliant friend Rebecca, as a Guest Post on AXIS Dance Company’s blog. The article I wrote covers the topic of distraction therapy in relation to managing chronic pain, something I am incredibly grateful for. This isn’t the reason I have been gone, but it is something I have been wanting to write about my experience with for a long time. Though it was written months ago, when I came back to read it yesterday, I discovered that it applies even more now.

Here is the link to the post I am so excited for the opportunity to have written:

In the guest post, I make sure to include steps I have taken to prevent losing my creative force. There is a portion dealing with guilt that was especially appropriate for me to remind myself of this week. I also describe my top ten distractions and some of the ways I have modified those activities so that they are still possible to enjoy, maybe not every day, but regularly. I am seeing first hand that with practice, pacing, and modifications to favorite activities, you can still lead a fulfilling, richly creative life in the face of chronic pain or illness (or both).

One activity swap I have done is due to not having the energy or physical stamina to paint any more, at least for now. I was devastated at first. Losing painting hurt so much and left such a void, and my grief over not being physically capable of painting seems to come in waves. Knowing how far away from myself I feel when I can’t garden, paint, or cook, three of my more physical hobbies that used to dominate my free time, I took the opportunity to rekindle an old hobby; beadworking and jewelry making! I am loving every second of it, even with the arthritis in my hands, this is something I can do in bed or sitting up.

The reason I have been gone for so long is that I opened an Etsy shop to sell my jewelry and artwork. The shop is called The Hopeful Spoon, where I design, make, and sell Awareness Jewelry for spoonies, as well as Boho beaded creations for the free-spirited style-hunter. Some select pieces of artwork are slowly being added to the store as well. In one month of being open for business so far, I haven’t done half bad! Currently, I am averaging a sale every other day, which is about a quarter of where I need to be, but definitely gives me hope that I can meet my goal in the not too distant future.

Many people have helped me get started, and if I could continue sitting up today, I would give them each the credit they deserve, but that will have to be my next post!

For my readers, I have special spoonie discount codes, as well as two public coupons that are displayed in my shop announcement. The first code is 10SSPOONIE for 10% off of any price order, and the second is 20SPOONIE for 20% off of $50 or more! Happy holiday shopping, and thank you for checking out my newest artistic endeavors. I am loving having my passion for art back in my daily life. I hope you love the designs I have been working with as much as I love creating them. Here is a peak at just a couple of the goodies up on my new shop, with more being added almost every day:

Glad to be back here again, and I can’t wait to see what new achievements 2016 will bring.

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It’s a major challenge to remain present despite the feelings of despair about all my worsening symptoms and lack of options that I am staring down. At the same time I’m always trying to figure out more and more about living inside my energy envelope and enduring the chronic pain, the lack of predictability, the severity and suddenness that my symptoms frequently come on.

Fortunately, a louder part of me than the despair knows that it’s important to grow and learn from this never-ending flareup, otherwise I am just surviving hour to hour, living in fear, and that isn’t enough for me. I’m greedy.

I want to get to a better place so I can really live again, within my limitations. So I can make my mark, however that is possible. It has to be possible. Everything is so hard now, but I know who I am, and I know who my friends are. I’m stronger than ever in some ways, and I am learning to forgive myself for the weaker parts.

Even when all I can do is breathe, it helps to remember that just being alive is amazing and improbable. I am so grateful for days when I am capable of seeing past the storms overhead. It’s okay that I can’t do that every day, because I’m doing my best.

Thank you for sharing!

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I hesitate to admit this, but it’s important. Before i got sick I was already pretending to be normal, pretending to be happy and productive and on some sort of trajectory, but I was just as lost as I am now. I have been dealing with severe anxiety disorders my entire life, ADHD, obsessive behaviors too numerous to list, occasional bouts of treatment resistant depression, insomnia, self-injury, severely restricted eating or binge eating depending on the year, as well as growing up with chronic pain to a much lesser degree than now in the form of frequent dislocations/subluxations, migraines, and dizziness/nausea, all of which went untreated for a long time, or treated but not correctly.

Now that I have a series of chronic illnesses/conditions, my mental health is under the microscope constantly. It has been enlightening but also terrifying. Not being able to hide my mental health or my physical health anymore is the part I’m still trying to accept. I’m used to being miserable to a degree and pushing through, always pushing through, and to have my body take that ability away from me has caused some serious grieving.

The thing I was most commended for other than my test scores was my ability to pretend like I wasn’t hurting while I was, both physically and mentally. All of the bits and pieces that make me my own person are also things that drew negative attention when I was younger, and I have trouble getting over that still.

My response to the negative attention, eventually, was to reinvent myself to be as normal as possible, as plain as possible, to not stand out too much, and to deny my artsy, nerdy, angsty side the freedom it wanted. Now I’m left with artsy, nerdy, angsty as things I need to learn to be proud of and to embrace again. I want to, I really do.

Those parts of me which long for the freedom to reinvent myself into the person I really am are winning. My hair is teal, my clothes are whatever the hell I feel like, I have been writing more honestly and openly, and I have picked up a paintbrush again.

So the path is there, I know what I need to do, but I’m scared to be myself again. For so long I’ve been this average-intelligence, straight, workaholic, brown-haired, plain-clothed girl who kept the ugliness and the oddness to herself, absolutely devoid of the desire to write the darkness inside of me or to paint it, only allowing thoughts out through a careful filter, and calling that happiness. It wasn’t. Neither was it sadness, exactly. I was just going in the wrong direction.

The reality is that my careful filter is broken now and only works in fits and starts… I can’t be anyone other than the person I have always been underneath the normal life I was trying to build around me like armor. I still love the interests I have cultivated while lost and wandering through life; I still love to garden, bake, and make my own home and beauty products. I absolutely still love my boyfriend, as well as this house and our cat. This is simply my soul wanting me to unleash it in any way possible in my new life, with my new limitations. I need to find a purpose, yes, but I also need to find myself again, be kind to myself instead of denying myself the freedom to be weird and potentially wonderful. So much anxiety must be tied up in the act of pretending not to be excited about the things that truly make me happy.

I don’t fully know what my happiness will look like now, but it will look different than the one I pretended was right for me.

To be honest, I’m relieved.

There are parts of me that are stronger than ever, and then obviously there are parts of me that are so weak that they have stolen life and time from me. But I am a survivor. This is me surviving. It might not be pretty, the struggle can get ugly and mean in an instant, but I have always survived, and I will continue to do my best. That will have to be enough.

I’m not any less okay than I was yesterday or the day before, I am simply not willing to pretend to be better or different than I feel. Some days I am still a suicidal teenager and some days I am a sage adult, and many days I bounce back and forth between the two. However, both are okay, both are me, and I am always going to be a survivor, even when I have no idea what else I am.

The term survivor implies that someone came through or currently resides in hell, however, and that is the part that people seem to forget. The struggle is what breaks you, but it is also what rebuilds you. We cannot be the same after we travel through nightmares turned reality.

Not the same, but certainly still me.

I am just too exhausted to draw a silver lining on my clouds today. Today it’s okay to acknowledge the storm overhead. To be soaked in it and shivering and afraid of the power behind it, but to remember that the sun also exists, just beyond those clouds.

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Thank you for sharing!

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So, I’m going to just say that things have been pretty bad for me right now. I have so damn many health care, financial, and emotional needs that are not being met, and after three and a half years of waiting my turn, I need something better than this, I need more, I need to live and have hope and at least try to get treatment for some of these problems. But just because I need something doesn’t mean it is possible. Money is an asshole that way. All ways, really.

I am still grieving the loss of a dear friend, and I talk to her at night when it’s quiet like this, and I think she hears me, but I don’t even know how to put into words how much it hurts to obliviously type her name on facebook like I’m going to see her there posting updates, and then to realize that no one gets to hear her sunny voice again. Who knows why it takes so long for the shock to wear off and the sadness that won’t lift to settle in. It’s like my bones are crying now, and I feel her absence physically.

All these things coupled with isolation and excessive pain levels with secondary depression, plus a nasty chest cold have made me a slightly more bitter girl, and I apologize for that, but then again, I kind of don’t want to apologize. Though it’s embarrassing to go off on an angry rant and publish it and re-read it the next day and not recognize who wrote the words, I did write it, and I did mean every word when I was writing and that tells me that someone else out there can maybe feel less alone if I continue to allow myself to occasionally write the lows, the times I don’t cope well, that my chronic illness brings.

The reason I’m suffering this week is simple. I went out, I lived a life for a week with two social calls an hour away from my house, and the consequence for my actions are a dire flare up and infections, even though I practiced preemptive rest, stayed hydrated, slept beforehand and loaded up on vitamins. That’s what the fuss is about, for any non-spoonies reading this. That’s why I’m “obsessed” with my illness and I never seem to win. You can do everything right and chronic illness is still a merciless, evil, cold hearted f*ck who will laugh at your plans, your support network, your therapy progress, your talents, and even your basic needs, and which will deny you access to them all from time to time.

I’m not trying to paint a grim picture, or a “poor me” kind of portrait, I’m trying to say that all spoonies, no matter how small you may see your contributions to be, all spoonies are important. You are important and you matter.

I guess I’m leaning towards the idea that if I don’t censor myself, I will probably help more people feel accepted and welcomed into the chronic illness community. We don’t have to have rainbows shooting out of our asses all the time to be valued and welcome members of the online spoonie community. I like encouraging people with stories about good days and things I am thankful for, and I won’t give that up, but I also don’t want to be missing a whole group of spoonies who feel pretty worthless and unaccepted by the rest of the chronic world.

Everyone needs a place to belong, even the undiagnosed, the doesn’t-quite-fit-the-diagnosis patients who are still in limbo, they need our support more than anyone. That is a stage in my journey where I was bitter every single day for at least a year.

So I’m going to perhaps post more vehement pieces than usual and not hold myself back. I will stop telling myself I can’t write on my worst days unless I have a good attitude while I do it,because that’s not therapeutic for me, for one thing. I do factor in here too, somewhere, I think.

The reality of being ill is that you will have some good days, some of us get more or less of those depending on our situation, some of us don’t have good days physically, but almost all spoonies eventually get to the point where you can have a series of bad days that you can handle emotionally, and those bad days will make you proud of yourself later on without too much soul searching involved. You endured and even conquered your illness for a while. You got through it without snapping and that’s to be commended. But it’s not to be expected from you. Positivity during hardship is not the only “right way” to cope. Because look what happens next; you overdo it or the weather changes or you cough funny, you have a medication reaction, or you develop a new symptom or allergy and things get complicated.

“Didn’t I just get through another hard week like this?” you think to yourself. It drags on, but you get through it, kind of numb and just making it day by day. And then not-so-wonderfully, another health setback; you have to take care of someone else who is ill, you get asked to another social function you can’t get out of, you have to attend three doctor’s appointments in one week, or whatever else it is, but it adds onto the pile you had not quite dug your way out of from last week yet. But you get through that week, and the next one too, though on the bad days you’re just counting the hours, you can’t even take it day by day things get so overwhelming. Months go by like this, a cycle of debilitation and not-quite-recovery only to be met with more medical problems, more stress, more debt, more isolation and eventually the bitterness that you thought maybe you had “gotten past” can sneak back up on you.

I’m not saying you are required by spoonie law or something ridiculous to feel all of these things in these specific ways for these reasons. I’m just setting the stage for those who are being hard on themselves for not coping as well as they’d like, and for people who may not understand what suffering from an invisible illness can be like when you aren’t improving.

No matter how you cope, or how well you “keep calm and carry on”, you still deserve to be commended. You’ve gone through a lot, and you should feel safe and understood when you are being honest about your pain. Honesty is not negativity.

Like this:

“Disability doesn’t make you exceptional,but questioning what you think you know about it does.” – Stella Young

The danger of being viewed through the lense of the “inspiring cripple” archetype is that it was created by ableists as a tool used to invalidate those who are struggling. It means that people expect things from you that you weren’t even capable of before disability, muchless after. It’s such an unhealthy way of approaching people who are ill, as if we are not trying hard enough unless we can plaster a fake smile on our face and say we’re doing well, when actually we are struggling in ways that only a small percentage of the population can understand. The notion of the inspiring cripple does not leave room for the uncensored reality of the chronic illness spectrum.

If you are able-bodied and do not experience mental illness, I am not your inspiration. If something I say or write is helpful to another spoonie, then that is why I am here and it makes me happy to be helpful whenever possible, but I don’t want ableist individuals thinking that my refusal to cry in a corner every day makes me somehow better at being sick than someone who can’t stop sobbing and wishing for death. I am not any better.

I am not “trying harder” than anyone else and I will not be used to shame someone who feels like they can’t handle their condition. I still feel like I can’t handle being chronically ill on a regular basis.

I am not your feel-good story. I am a deeply flawed human being with constant, unrelenting chronic pain and many other debilitating conditions and symptoms, too. My choices are give up and die, or keep trying to find a reason to wake up and to put food in my mouth once a day. Sometimes that is a genuine struggle. Sometimes I do not get out of bed, and I do not put food in my body, and that does not make me pathetic or weak, it makes me sick. I have good days and bad days and I have given myself permission to have both.

I am so very tired of inspiration porn, aimed at the general public and unapologetically using those who are physically disabled, suffer chronic pain, or live with mental illness and/or neurodivergence. Inspiration porn wants you to say “well, it could be worse, I could be that poor person in a wheelchair or that teenager with a cane, therefore I’m not allowed to feel shitty, ever.”

Bull. Shit.

I am happy to answer any and all genuine questions about my life, my coping strategy, my illnesses, or anything else that someone is interested in, provided that the person asking is not just going to use my answers against me later. I am not interested in answering questions that are actually just thinly-veiled judgemental commentary on how I deal with my pain and other symptoms. I wish that my abled friends could just acknowledge that my reality is not something you can comprehend if you don’t live every second of every day in pain, knowing that the pain is life-long or progressive.

If you are not sick in a long-term sense, please try to understand why you cannot compare my life-altering, completely debilitating daily pain to the last time you had the flu, or the time you broke your arm, or even the car accident you were in, unless one of those things resulted in a long-term illness, disability, or chronic pain disorder. Flus, broken bones, and car accidents may be unpleasant, but after some healing your life resumed as planned, so you have no idea what it is like to live in my body, the body that has caused me to slowly, against my will, forget all my dreams and plans for the future. Please realize that every pain is experienced differently and is unique to each individual who is suffering. Comparison of one disabled person to another person, disabled or not, is never okay. We are not brave for the things healthy people think we are brave for. We are not brave for simply existing, we are not brave for going about our day as normally as we possibly can. Attitude does not differentiate a “good” cripple from a “bad” cripple. Inspiration porn is pure victim blaming, and society has unfortunately picked up this nasty habit.

Ableist propaganda would have us think that if we are not using our illness to transform ourselves into an inspiration, we are just wasting space and burdening those around us. Do not buy into that trash! I am sorry for each and every person who has ever felt like their pain or illness is the punchline to an ableist joke. Those of us who are ill are allowed to make jokes, we are allowed to seek out the humor in our situation, and it is despicable that people would use that coping mechanism against us. Yes, I use sarcasm to cope. Yes, I use humor to cope. No, that does not mean I’m cured or experiencing less pain or “getting better at dealing with it” as so many have said to me. It means that if I don’t laugh about this, it will crush me.

My medical decisions are not up for discussion unless you are another spoonie, and even then, I retain the freedom to completely ignore any and all medical advice that doesn’t come from my doctors. I even retain the right to ignore medical advice from doctors that does not make sense or goes against my beliefs.

I certainly won’t be basing my medical decisions off of an abled friend’s (ex-friend’s) suggestion because they feel like they have “observed my pain” (read: been annoyed by how much I talk about it) for long enough that they are unreasonably comfortable making sweeping declarations about my use of medication, or with stating that I “pity myself” (read: retreat from overwhelming and triggering situations so I can take care of myself appropriately) sometimes. Fuck yeah, I do pity myself sometimes. I refuse to apologize for that.

The abled seem to possess an unlimited capacity to confuse my online and in-person honesty and unwillingness to sugar-coat reality with what they view as pity-seeking behavior and weakness. Saying I have an incurable illness is not pitying myself, it is the truth. I am allowed to speak the truth, my truth, and I am allowed to remark at the depressing reality of chronic pain. Ableism makes accepting the reality of our illness that much more difficult. If I said I never have moments of self-pity I would be lying, and that helps no one. I have every right to be upset about my conditions and to grieve over the losses in my life as a result. And so do other spoonies at any point in their journey.

It is just grotesque that there are people self-righteously using those of us struggling with mental illness, cancer, or chronic invisible illness (to name a few) as their motivation, or to shame others with similar struggles. I don’t want my accomplishments to ever be used to make someone feel inadequate.

The myths that are perpetuated by inspiration porn make it harder to be honest about what we as spoonies experience, which is why it’s time to start calling ableism out wherever and whenever we see it. Just because one person with MS can work a full time job does not mean that another MS patient is faking their inability to work. It’s such a simple thing, to validate someone, yet we don’t do it enough.

You wouldn’t worry about being polite when calling out racism or homophobia, so why would you worry about offending people when you call out their discriminatory attitudes towards chronic illness, disability, neurodivergence, mental illness, and chronic pain?

the above image is from Chronic Illness Cat and the below article is taken from EDS Info, a wonderfully informative blog for any chronic pain sufferer, which you should all go check out and bookmark and return to often.

UNTREATED CHRONIC PAIN IS ACUTE PAIN

The physiological changes associated with acute pain, and their intimate neurological relationship with brain centers controlling emotion, and the evolutionary purpose of these normal bodily responses, are classically understood as the “Fight or Flight” reaction,

When these adaptive physiologic responses outlive their usefulness the fight or flight response becomes pathological, leading to chronic cardiovascular stress, hyperglycemia which both predisposes to and worsens diabetes, splanchnic vasoconstriction leading to impaired digestive function and potentially to catastrophic consequences such as mesenteric insufficiency.

Unrelieved pain can be accurately thought of as the “universal complicator” which worsens all co-existing medical or psychiatric problems through the stress mechanisms reviewed above, and by inducing cognitive and behavioral changes in the sufferer that can interfere with obtaining needed medical care

Dr. Daniel Carr, director of the New England Medical Center, put it this way:

Chronic pain is like water damage to a house – if it goes on long enough, the house collapses,” [sighs Dr. Carr] “By the time most patients make their way to a pain clinic, it’s very late. What the majority of doctors see in a chronic-pain patient is an overwhelming, off-putting ruin: a ruined body and a ruined life.”

Dr. Carr is exactly right, and the relentless presence of pain has more than immediate effects. The duration of pain, especially when never interrupted by truly pain-free times, creates a cumulative impact on our lives.

CONSEQUENCES OF UNTREATED AND INADEQUATELY-TREATED PAIN

we must also consider often profound decrements in family and occupational functioning, and iatrogenic morbidity consequent to the very common mis-identification of pain patient as drug seeker.

The overall deleterious effect of chronic pain on an individual’s existence and outlook is so overwhelming that it cannot be overstated. The risk of death by suicide is more than doubled in chronic pain patients, relative to national rates.

What happens to patients denied needed pharmacological pain relief is well documented. For example, morbidity and mortality resulting from the high incidence of moderate to severe postoperative pain continues to be a major problem despite an array of available advanced analgesic technology

Patients who received less than 10 mg of parenteral morphine sulfate equivalents per day were more likely to develop delirium than patients who received more analgesia (RR 5.4, 95% CI 2.4–12.3)… Avoiding opioids or using very low doses of opioids increased the risk of delirium. Cognitively intact patients with undertreated pain were nine times more likely to develop delirium than patients whose pain was adequately treated. Undertreated pain and inadequate analgesia appear to be risk factors for delirium in frail older adults. [7]

PAIN SUFFERERS ARE MEDICALLY DISCRIMINATED AGAINST

Chronic pain patients are routinely treated as a special class of patient, often with severely restricted liberties – prevented from consulting multiple physicians and using multiple pharmacies as they might please, for example, and in many cases have little say in what treatment modalities or which medications will be used. These are basic liberties unquestioned in a free society for every other class of sufferer

chronic pain patients are often seen by medical professionals primarily as prescription or medication problems, rather than as whole individuals who very often present an array of complex comorbid medical, psychological, and social problems

Instead these complex general medical patients are ‘cared for’ as if their primary and only medical problem was taking prescribed analgesic medication.

This attitude explains why most so-called Pain Treatment Centers have reshaped themselves into Addiction Treatment Centers. Even with a documented cause for pain, the primary goal of these programs, whether stated or not, is to coerce patients to stop taking their pain medications.

This may work for a small number of pain patients who may not really need opioids in the first place, but is a “cruel and unusual” punishment for those of us with serious, documented, pain-causing illnesses.

The published success rate of these programs has nothing to do with pain – it is measured by how many people leave the program taking no pain medication, but there is no data about the aftermath, how many manage to stay off their medication long-term.

their obvious primary medical need is for medical stabilization, not knee-jerk detoxification

CHRONIC PAIN IS A LEGITIMATE MEDICAL DISEASE

Chronic pain is probably the most disabling, and most preventable, sequelae to untreated, and inadequately treated, severe pain.

Following a painful trauma or disease, chronicity of pain may develop in the absence of effective relief. A continuous flow of pain signals into the pain mediating pathways of the dorsal horn of the spinal cord alters those pathways through physiological processes known as central sensitization, and neuroplasticity. The end result is the disease of chronic pain in which a damaged nervous system becomes the pain source generator separated from whatever the initial pain source was.

Aggressive treatment of severe pain, capable of protecting these critical spinal pain tracts, is the standard care recommended in order to achieve satisfactory relief and prevention of intractable chronic pain

Medications represent the mainstay therapeutic approach to patients with acute or chronic pain syndromes… aimed at controlling the mechanisms of nociception, [the] complex biochemical activity [occurring] along and within the pain pathways of the peripheral and central nervous system (CNS)… Aggressive treatment of severe pain is recommended in order to achieve satisfactory relief and prevention of intractable chronic pain.

we are seeing ominous scientific evidence in modern imaging studies of a maladaptive and abnormal persistence of brain activity associated with loss of brain mass in the chronic pain population

Atrophy is most advanced in the areas of the brain that process pain and emotions. In a 2006 news article, a researcher into the pathophysiological effects of chronic pain on brain anatomy and cognitive/emotional functioning, explained:

This constant firing of neurons in these regions of the brain could cause permanent damage, Chialvo said. “We know when neurons fire too much they may change their connections with other neurons or even die because they can’t sustain high activity for so long,” he explained

It is well known that chronic pain can result in anxiety, depression and reduced quality of life

The areas involved include the prefrontal cortex and the thalamus, the part of the brain especially involved with cognition and emotions

The magnitude of this decrease is equivalent to the gray matter volume lost in 10–20 years of normal aging. The decreased volume was related to pain duration, indicating a 1.3 cm3 loss of gray matter for every year of chronic pain

clinicians have used opioid preparations to good analgesic effect since recorded history.

In fields of medicine involving controlled substances, especially addiction medicine and pain medicine, the doctor-patient relationship has become grossly distorted.

doctors-in-good-standing who, faced with a patient in pain and therefore at risk of triggering an investigation, modify their treatment in an attempt to avoid regulatory attention

Examples include a blanket refusal to prescribe controlled substances even when clearly indicated, or selecting less effective and more toxic non-controlled medications when a trial of opioid analgesics would be in the best interests of a particular patient. At the very least, some degree of suspicion and mistrust will surely arise in any medical relationship involving controlled substances.

the quality of care most physicians provide is fairly close to the medical standard of care which is what the textbooks say one should do, and which is generally in line with core medical ethical obligations

For example, modern pain management textbooks universally recommend ‘titration to effect’ (simplistically: gradually increasing the opioid dose until the pain is relieved or until untreatable side effects prevent further dosage increase) as the procedure by which one properly treats chronic pain with opioid medications. Yet the overwhelmingly physicians in America do not practice titration to effect, or anything even vaguely resembling it, for fear of becoming ‘high dose prescriber’ targets of federal or state law enforcement.

It is a foundation of medicine back to ancient times that a primary obligation of a physician is to relieve suffering. A physician also has a fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of the individual patient at all times, and that the interests of the patient are to be held above all others, including those of family or the state.[23] These ethical obligations incumbent on all individual physicians extend to state licensing and regulatory boards which are composed of physicians monitoring and regulating themselves. [24]

A number of barriers to effective pain relief have been identified and include:

The failure of clinicians to identify pain relief as a priority in patient care;

Fear of regulatory scrutiny of prescribing practices for opioid analgesics;

The persistence of irrational beliefs and unsubstantiated fears about addiction, tolerance, dependence, and adverse side effects of opioid analgesics.

A rift has developed between the usual custom and practice standard of care (the medical community norm – what most reputable physicians do) and the reasonable physician standard of care (what the textbooks say to do – the medical standard of care), and this raises very serious and difficult dilemma for both individual physicians and medical board

Research into pathophysiology and natural history of chronic pain have dramatically altered our understanding of what chronic pain is, what causes it, and the changes in spinal cord and brain structure and function that mediate the disease process of chronic pain, which is generally progressive and neurodegenerative

This understanding explains many clinical observations in chronic pain patients, such as phantom limb syndrome, that the pain spreads to new areas of the body not involved in the initiating injury, and that it generally worsens if not aggressively treated. The progressive, neurodegenerational nature of chronic pain was recently shown in several imaging studies showing significant losses of neocortical grey matter in the prefrontal lobes and thalamus

Regarding the standard of care for pain management:

1) Delaying aggressive opioid therapy in favor of trying everything else first is not rational based on a modern, scientific understanding of the pathophysiology of chronic pain, and is therefore not the standard of care. Delaying opioid therapy could result in the disease of chronic pain.

Like this:

When I first came down with an invisible illness shortly after being in a car struck by a semi-truck, things looked pretty bleak.

My thought process after six months of dealing with the constant doctor visits and physical therapy, with the pain, fatigue, and fevers, was that either me or my illness was gonna go. Both of us were not gonna share this body.

Fix it or kill me. That was my motto. I could not conceive of a world in which I could not work, but in which I still had value. Value despite a dollar amount I was bringing in. No part of me wanted to accept that I would have to learn to live with this, or that my life not only had to be paused, but also that I may never be able to participate in the same ways as before no matter what I tried to cure myself. We hadn’t even started talking about disease processes or autoimmune or anything at all other than injury from the car accident, but I was frustrated that I just kept getting worse the more work I did to heal.

On the days in between flare ups, before I knew what a flare up even was, I insisted to myself that I was cured, and I was horribly let down and unprepared for every single episode or new symptom that manifested.

When people told me it would be easier and better to approach my illness from a place of positivity, I was furious, because they were making the assumption that I wanted to live with pain in every part of my body, and I really did not, at least not at that point. I had just recently been perfectly healthy, my body and brain up to any challenge set in front of me. How could I adjust to being so drastically limited and in so much pain I couldn’t even drive or work a full shift? It truly seemed impossible.

It also felt like when people tried to encourage me to make peace with all the unknowns and all the debilitating symptoms they were implying that mind over matter would cure me, or at least allow me to live a ‘normal’ or fulfilling life. Again, a life without a job and my recently hard-won independence seemed so completely unfulfilling. I went straight into defensive language, outbursts, and isolation at the first suggestion that somehow I was expected to be strong enough to cope with physical weakness, fatigue, pain, sensitivities to sound, light, chemicals, smells, and touch, energy crashes, cognitive dysfunction, lack of ability to work or drive, and the accompanying guilt and grief that go with losing your place in life right after you gain autonomy over it for the first time. I could find so many more reasons to be upset than to be optimistic. It felt like everything I loved had been ripped away, like all my choices had been taken from me. Of course that isn’t true, but for newly diagnosed or undiagnosed pain patients, especially at a young age, it’s entirely common to feel like it is the end of your life and nothing good will ever be possible again unless it comes packaged as a complete and total cure. The temptation is to retreat and hope that you can pick back up again where you left off when you feel better, and that’s acceptable with temporary injuries and illnesses, but with chronic illness there are often no “feel better” days, and there is only so much hiding from life you can do before it becomes apparent that life is going to continue, albeit differently.

I still have moments where I think I can’t handle it, and weeks where everything spins around me and I hope hope hope I will still be okay when it all lands again. I still fear for my future, I fear for my relationships, and feel insecure about my lowered libido, frequent whining, fitness level, and inability to contribute financially. Those things are part of being human though, if I didn’t experience some guilt and upset over them, I wouldn’t be me.

Amazingly, I have learned a lot through illness. I have learned to be patient no matter how uncomfortable or unhappy I am. I have learned to take care of and prioritize myself even when it feels selfish and lazy. I have learned that internalized ableism is what makes me feel that way, and that ableism does not do me any good, especially not when it has become a part of my own thought process. I have learned the importance of asking for help, though I haven’t quite mastered actually asking for it. So much has sunk in; things that I was resistant to when fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome first reared their heads. I wonder if I am even the same person anymore, but not in a totally negative way.

I have learned above all that there is not as much wrong with me as there is with a society that teaches people to base worth off of income earned, sexual intensity, physical ability, and even intelligence. There is nothing wrong with having an excess of one or even all of those things. But there is nothing inherently better about possessing those things, either. Except that it certainly makes your way in life a lot easier to have money, health, sex appeal, and unlimited brainpower. Maybe that’s what I like more about myself now; it’s not that easy anymore, I can’t just draw on one of those things and call myself a better person for having it. I can’t reassure myself with meaningless attributes, and that is its own kind of blessing. I have to concern myself instead with things like courage, persistence, kindness, and even that elusive thing we call happiness. Amidst all the pain, being ill has given me something wonderful; it has allowed me to seek out those true, meaningful, beautiful traits in others, regardless of what value society has assigned to someone.

I’m actually surprised that the person I was ten years ago has grown up into a person who does not hate herself and who rarely wastes energy on disliking others. It’s a pleasant realization. I really believe I must have hated myself to treat my abled and active body with such disdain, and to have thought I was so boring when my life was always so full of unique friendships and passions, and to have constantly been comparing myself to others and feeling so shortchanged. Not to say I don’t have moments where my body is a source of insecurity, and I certainly get frustrated with the slow, meandering pace that my brain operates at now. Somehow though, over the years, the negativity has become tempered with “but tomorrow I will be grateful for what I do have”.

A lot of my current (relative) level of peace has to do with getting almost all the way off of Lyrica and starting to paint again (more about that soon!). A lot of it has to do with this blog and the wonderful people who have introduced themselves and the strong sense of community that lives here. Also through the groups I have been invited into because of my writing here. A lot has to do with therapy, some of it with self-therapy techniques, and some with the actual, lasting progress I have made along the way. It’s easy to look back at three and a half years of illness and feel overwhelmed with all the life I have not lived in that time. I had planned to have a career and a child by now, and perhaps to have bought my house.

Ten years ago, I would have only seen that big dark cloud of not measuring up materially to the person I had set out to become, and I never would have noticed all the glints of silver lining to be found from where I’m standing in the rain. Three years ago, I feared there was no happiness or peace to be found amongst the terror and the overwhelming nature of being sick in my early twenties. Two years ago, I knew that others lived with diseases and still had fulfilling lives, but the knowledge just made me angry. A year ago, the knowledge that others out there were dealing with similar things and did not want to die every single day started to give me hope, and this blog helped me find those people and learn the self-acceptance that I needed so badly.

Now, I want to start to figure out what I can do to give back, but I have taken a pretty big set back this week by conscious overexertion so I could spend time with my family and my mom while she was visiting Oregon for ten days. During my recovery from this, I will be writing more and pondering what I have to contribute, and where the chronic pain community would be best served by what I do have to offer.

Thank you for reading my blog, thank you for reaching out to me, thank you for being so understanding and gentle, and so patient. I couldn’t have done it without you.

More reality checks when it comes to chronic pain and opiates, via a super smart fellow blogger! So happy to print this and put it in my medical binder for those idiots who think I should just suffer endlessly, needlessly, and be happy for the privilege.

It’s just so wonderful when people form an opinion based on facts and not histrionics.

TRUE: Opiates do not remove chronic pain, they do not numb pain like Novocain, they merely dull it enough so that it isn’t all-consuming.

2. false: Pain is the body trying to tell you to stop, so you shouldn’t take opiates to cover up the pain signals.

TRUE: Normal pain is an alarm to take action, but chronic pain happens when the alarm gets stuck in the “on” position – the switch itself is broken.

3. false: Opiates make you dull, confused, and non-functional.

TRUE: When used for pain relief, opiates allow people to be more active and functional, get out of the house and socialize, sometimes even continue working.

4. false: There are other pain medications that work just as well as opiates.

TRUE: Opiates are the most (and often the only) effective medications for pain.

5. false: Opiates have severe and permanently damaging side effects.

TRUE: Opiates have fewer and lesser side-effects than most of the other medications prescribed for pain.

6. false: You will get addicted if taking opiates.

TRUE: People taking opiates for pain are statistically unlikely to become addicted unless they already have addictive tendencies (5% chance). However, regular use of many medications causes dependence after your body has adjusted to them.

7. false: If you take opiates for too long, you’ll get hyperalgesia.

TRUE: Opiate-induced hyperalgesia is extremely rare in humans, and this scare tactic is based on just a handful of very small research studies.

8. false: If the pain is constant, you’ll get used to it and it won’t hurt as much.

TRUE: Pain that is allowed to persist uncontrolled leads to changes in the nerves that can eventually become permanent.

9. false: Opiates work the same way for everyone.

TRUE: Different people get the same amount of pain relief from widely varying dosages because our bodies are all different in the way we “digest” opiates.

10. false: It’s better not to take opiates because they damage the nervous system and cause hormonal imbalances.

TRUE: Persistent pain results in the same kind of damages to the nervous and hormonal systems.

11. false: You should not take opiates because your pain won’t improve.

TRUE: Chronic pain can only be treated, not cured. Opiates are often the best means available to treat the devastating pain symptoms until a cure is found.

12. false: If you start taking opiates, you’ll just have to take more and more forever.

TRUE: Most chronic pain patients finds a stable dose of opiates that works for them. If doses need to be increased, it is usually because the pain condition gets worse over time.

13. false: People only want opiates for the high.

TRUE: When taken as prescribed for chronic pain, opiates do not make you “high”. The same chemicals that make illegal users “high” go toward dulling the pain instead.

14. false: It’s better to tough it out.

TRUE: Denying people pain relief sentences them to a life of unnecessary suffering.

Many people disabled by chronic pain are unfairly accused of lying and faking, so here’s some myths from that category too:

1. false: People who complain about chronic pain are just trying to get SSDI.

TRUE: Most people disabled by pain desperately want to work. Many had to give up high-level, well-paying positions and now live in poverty on SSDI. There may some fakers, but this is not a reason to deny SSDI for truly disabling pain.

2. misleading: If injured workers are given opiates they are unlikely to return to work (statistically true)

TRUE: This is probably because their injuries are serious enough to cause chronic pain and require opiates, not because the opiates are keeping them away from work.

Thank you for sharing!

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Gaining Ground Despite Chronic Illness

Since I first started going down the rabbit hole into the land of stranger and stranger medical mysteries, I have been losing things.

For three years, all I could see were the things that were slipping through my fingers, and I grieved considerably for each loss. I lost my job, my ability to drive, my self-respect, my future, and even at one point I let myself believe that I had lost the ability to be a good mother when the time comes. My grief was so strong that it blinded me to the possibilities that were opening up in front of me even as other doors closed.

Change is scary, from going to a new school, being diagnosed with a chronic illness, or starting a new business, newness is challenging. For myself, I had to learn to accept that I cannot change the stigma against Fibro alone, and I cannot make my doctors or my boyfriend or my mom understand it, but I can and have found others out there who feel what I feel and struggle with burdensome illnesses.Through reaching out to people in similar situations, I am hoping we can bring out the best in each other, and that is exactly what I have found here. Within the chronic illness blogging community there is so much support and enthusiasm that I can’t help but get swept up in it all. My healing process didn’t really begin until this blog got up and running. Yet, I have to remember that even once started, healing does not look like a straight line, especially with illnesses and conditions I will have for the rest of my life. I will always have very, very, very bad days and then there will always be awesome days to balance them out.

There is considerable strength to be found in just living to the best of my ability. Easier said than done, but a goal for me to aim towards!

There is no simple way to make the illnesses we face easier to confront, or even to take away the pain for a single day, as much as I wish otherwise. We spend our days fighting an invisible monster called Pain, and every day he is there when we wake up. We do the best we can, whether we are battling our illness from bed, from crutches, a wheelchair, a scooter, or our feet, every day is a marathon for us.

When we start to feel like we’re losing control of everything around us because of chronic illness and pain, the place where we have most control is in our self-care and self-love, which I couldn’t even fathom until I began to write a page of weekly affirmations. In the midst of the fear and chaos is acceptance. If you are in the grieving stage, I promise, acceptance is the best thing since sliced bread. It doesn’t happen overnight and it doesn’t happen easily all the time, but when you look back, you’ll see how far you’ve come. And it is worth it. We all deserve to accept ourselves, illnesses and all. If acceptance is an area you struggle in, why not try jotting down self-compliments or reassurances. They can be all the things you wish people told you, it can be all the things you believe about yourself, it can be as simple as saying “I am passionate about writing and I have a lot to say”, “I deserve to be loved”, or “last night I got enough sleep” or as complex as you need them to be. I feel like I’m not even writing when I do this exercise, the words just spill onto the paper from somewhere deep inside of me. I guess I must have been not allowing myself to think positive, comforting, reassuring things for a long time. I don’t know why, but I do know I have an awful lot of affirmations to get off my chest. Certain ones I find myself writing over and over again each week and sometimes on other days as well. These seem to be things I have a hard time believing, but which are important to me none the less. Someday, hopefully even these hard-to-digest messages of self-love will begin to sink in, and gradually, as many of the other affirmations have, they will become a part of every day outlook. Affirmations have helped me gain so much that I didn’t even know I was missing. So instead of losing things, now I can focus on what is still there, what is inside me that I can love and share with the world.

If you’re looking for a good way to start 2015 off, writing down a list of positive things about yourself can change your perspective on life. It can give you that boost of self-esteem and motivation you were looking for. It’s easy, painless, and you don’t have anything to lose! I bet you will be amazed by what you find out when you start writing. ❤

I hope that everyone had a wonderful weekend!

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Today as I was on my way from the bedroom to the living room with my stash of topical treatments for pain, I realized I must have a pretty decent collection by now, not even counting the twenty or so others I have thrown out. Each one goes with a different kind of pain that it helps to relieve, sometimes not enough at all, sometimes just enough to not scream. Sometimes I hurt so bad I forget I have them completely, and when that happens, they definitely don’t do me any good!

My current collection of topical pain relievers.

Do you have a small pharmacy at your disposal too? I better not be the only one who buys supplement after supplement that will supposedly help with pain (I was too embarrassed to take that picture, it would have scared you guys. So many bottles!!!), and I hope I’m not the only one who scours Amazon for the newest rubs, creams, and pain relieving ointments. Sometimes I hit gold, and I will make a list of my favorite topical and oral over the counter treatments very soon. The little gold and silver pen is a crystal powered “acupen”, not quite like the really nice $150 ones out there, I only spent $16 on this one, but it gets the job done on hands, feet, arms, parts of my neck, ears, jaw. It just blocks the pain signals temporarily by sending out a harmless electric pulse, it’s not magic, but hey, every bit counts when relief is slow in coming. Bonus: it doesn’t ever need batteries replaced!

I have told my boyfriend a million times that distraction is half the game. it’s why I talk non-stop sometimes when I’m hurting my worst, even though it gives me a horrid sore throat and I start to feel flu-sick after a few minutes of chatting. Even inflicting more pain is better than focusing on the pain. If that makes any sense at all. It probably does not, lol.

Sometimes I can’t seem to tune into real life, or break Pain’s hold on me. On those days I sometimes get depressed, anxious, and a little desperate. I feel outside of myself and “other” somehow, like I have nothing in common with the people around me, or like I shouldn’t be around people at all. Now I (try to) channel that bad energy into looking for at-home treatments to try or new ways of thinking about my illness that make it feel a little less like the massive burden it is. Every single little trick helps!

BTW, the most effective combo for my pain so far is Topricin, and my specially-mixed-for-me prescription of Ketamine 10% / Keprofen 10%/ Tetracaine 4%. But I actually do use every single one of the things pictures here on an almost daily basis, because I can only put the creams on so many times each day so I rotate through all my options frequently.

If anyone has anything to recommend, I would love to hear about it! I can’t handle anything that is too much like IcyHot, because that burnsburnsBURNS. But lighter cooling/warming products are usually okay.

Hope everyone is having a relatively pain free day. ❤

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I would literally rather have a finger chopped off (I have actually lost the top part of a finger right above the last knuckle so I do know what that feels like, I’m not just saying this in ignorance), maybe even two fingers, than deal with this cruel pain.

It starts in the back of my head and the base of my spine, and then the two painful areas spread out, reaching towards each other up and down my back, like it’s encasing me in a spiky shell made out of pure, unadulterated pain, then up, up, over my ear and it curls so evilly around my eyes. It is so immense. So sickening. So beautifully and radiant and piercing that I am unable to do anything but stay still and be consumed. I feel like a sponge being wrung out over and over again. There is no way to adequately explain the waves of pain cresting and rolling over my body.

I am misery. I am made out of twisting, tearing, crushing pain. Lightening is running through my bones, doing whatever it wants unchecked.

But this is right now. Tomorrow might be better, tomorrow is hopeful and waiting for me, if I wait for it.

I’ve written before about how tough it is, how draining, to wait without any end in sight. I often have to sit with a severity and kind of pain that consumes me, there is no other option. I do not have access to the correct or even halfway correct painkillers and muscle relaxers, Lyrica is a joke. I wish I hadn’t started taking it because it will not let me stop. I ran out of Aleve…. it was easier on my stomach than the mostly useless Diclofenac I have been prescribed. I can’t seem to take hydoxyzine without having worsening panic attacks or some awful, foggy, un-refreshing naps all day long, and propanolol was causing me disrupted sleep, worsening and more frequent panic, and severe brain fog, so I was told to discontinue using it. I could not write or organize my thoughts on either one, and my speech was declining as quickly as my short term memory. I do not think that Lyrica is helpful with my speech either, what with it’s toxicity to new brain synapses (post to come about that research later, when I can think). When you’re in a ton of pain and your supposedly super smart neurologist(s) tell you to start taking Gabapentin, then Gralise (the once a day version of Gabapentin) and then finally they land on Lyrica, you just go with it, right?

NO. No no no.

If only I had known that my doctors had no idea what was wrong with me at that time, that they were guessing in the dark, and that they were only getting slightly closer by prescribing Lyrica. They were also condemning me to a long period of taking pills that are highly dangerous to a fetus. I wish someone had explained that, because 22 year old me still knew she wanted kids pretty soon, illness or no illness.

For now, all I can do is tough it out, sit here with a level of pain that is worse than having a missing finger, even with all the non-narcotic pills and supplements I do have at my disposal.

How can that possibly be?

Because when a normal person chops off their finger in a freak accident, they have inherent opioids and opiate receptors inside the body, and a healthy body will send out lots of pain-dampening chemicals to keep the pain contained. I didn’t cry when the top of my finger got bitten through, but I did lose a lot of blood and go into shock eventually. Sometimes, even though I’m not losing blood or crying, I go into shock from the amount of pain that my chronic condition causes. For people in chronic pain, all the possible opioids are being flooded into the system all the time, almost completely in vain. Unfortunately, on top of this normal cycle of central sensitization that happens in many kinds of chronic pain, in fibromyalgia patients there are not enough opiate receptors to get any real relief, even if that constant flood of internal opiates was enough to help us with the level of whole-body pain we experience.

In the face of a spine full of invisible daggers, my body’s helpful ability to make opiates is next-to-useless. Unfortunately, chronic pain sufferers never get the natural rush of relief that comes along with acute pain.

It also means pain pills do not work as effectively for people with fibromyalgia. Some of the folks who need them most can’t even make efficient use of painkillers inside the body. Completely unfair, right? I think so too!

For now, I am waiting. I am not calling my doctor’s office frantically, although I may at some point today, and I am not sobbing hysterically even though I would like to completely melt down. I know it can actually be worse than this, as much as that seems impossible right now, because I have been in even more pain than this and sat with it.

It took years to get from “I will never accept that someone can just feel like this most of the time,” to “Oh well, what am I still able to do despite the pain, in between the waves?” It’s not an easy journey, but I can say that I am happy with the progress I have made, slow as it is at times. Like all progress, I go back and forth, not every day is a good day no matter how much positivity I pump into my life.

To be perfectly honest, I do want relief today, I can’t take this, and narcotics would absolutely help me do the many many things I need to get done but which will have to wait until tomorrow, at the very least, because there is no relief for me any time in the near future. Fortunately, I am still able to write, albeit slowly, and for that I am thankful. I know that it is a slippery slope with the painkillers that do help me, and I am 25, and I can sit with this pain again and again, and I can wait. It doesn’t not mean it is fair, or that I am happy with the situation, just that I know my will is stronger than this horrible pain. I will still be here when it recedes a bit, and that is all that matters right now. Half of me is trying to be calm and logical, but the other half wants to scream and cry and use up precious energy on fear.

I might feel like I’m being consumed by my pain at the moment, but in truth, I am pushing through the fire, and I will emerge mostly fine on the other side when this pain is done with me.

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Sadly, we start to use this sort of language against ourselves after a time… It has to stop! Shame and guilt need to be taken off the shoulders of the chronically ill and those in chronic pain, there is enough to deal with besides having to “prove our pain” to anyone.

No one chooses to suffer constantly. No one. We all want to be happy, healthy, contributing, but you never know what someone’s suffering amounts to unless you have to live under the same burdens and restrictions.

What to Do When You Have to Resort to the Emergency Room (When You Have a Chronic Illness)

A trip to the ER is no fun, no matter how you spin it. When you’re a chronic pain patient or someone with a chronic illness that can cause bouts of severe pain, it can be a complete and total nightmare.

A patient with chronic pain can help the Emergency Room staff to understand that their medical problems, especially pain, are a legitimate emergency by following a few guidelines and suggestions that will lessen some of the unpleasant drama of going to the ER.

Always bear in mind that the Emergency Room is a last resort, and Urgent Care will almost always turn away a patient with a chronic illness. Hospitals are so wrapped up in covering their asses legally that they have started turning away chronic pain patients much like Urgent Care does, even when the need for treatment is real and immediate.

Your regular healthcare team, especially your Primary Care Physician, is by far your best bet for getting help managing a chronic condition that is spiking out of control, but sometimes the ER is the only option. When that happens, here are some tips to help make your experience more manageable:

Make sure that you have a regular physician who treats your chronic pain. That’s a relationship that all chronic pain patients should establish before they ever set foot in an emergency room. Without this all-important steady doctor-patient relationship, the rest of this list is not really possible. In terms of seeking out aid in the Emergency Room for a spike or flare of pain having to do with an ongoing condition or problem, even having a bad doctor is better than no doctor at all. If you are having trouble finding a primary care physician who actually does care, the best place to start looking are local and even national support groups for your condition(s). They will have lists of hospitals and even specific doctors in your area who have been a good match for others in your situation. If those doctors are not taking patients, don’t be afraid to ask their staff where they would recommend going or if that doctor can make some recommendations of physicians they know to be effective at treating your condition. This search can take a while, but always keep a PCP on file, if you at all can. Not having a primary person who writes your prescriptions and handles your referrals makes the staff in an Emergency Room nervous no matter what.

Show that you have tried to contact your regular doctor before you go to the ER. If you have been in pain for five days and have not alerted your doctor, the ER staff will question how bad your pain really is. Even if the pain struck out of the blue that day, make an effort to contact your regular doctor first. ER staff will be more sympathetic to patients who have called their doctors and been told to go to the emergency room because the doctor was unable to see them. At least you’re showing you made an effort and only using the emergency room as your treatment of last resort, as opposed to the primary place you go for pain medication. This is important, as unfair as it is, they will not give you proper care if you are using the ER too liberally. Having your physician back up your story is never a bad thing, it helps establish legitimacy and urgency, and can help push you through to getting treatment sooner rather than making your wait for four hours “just to make sure you’re really in pain” before giving you any medication or imaging.

Bring a letter from your doctor. A letter from your physician, with a diagnosis and current treatment regimen, is a logical, completely reasonable thing to carry with you, particularly if you’re on a regular dose of opiates in today’s atmosphere of distrust and disbelief of pain patients. Always make sure the letter has your doctor’s name and phone number. That way, if ER doctors want to contact your physicians, they can. This is especially useful if you’re traveling or going to a hospital that you have never visited before.

Bring a list of medications. Bring a list of your medications, instead of relying on memory. Usually the hospital will already have access to the list of everything that you have taken for the past several years, so don’t try to lie about it, you will only hurt yourself in the long run. Always be honest about medications you have taken or have been prescribed.

Work cooperatively with emergency room staff. It might not be fair, but if a patient comes in screaming and shouting that they need pain medication right away, the staff isn’t going to like it. Being loud and distressed will call negative attention to your actions and makes hospital staff that much less sympathetic. You might be in agonizing pain, but the staff is going to be more concerned with “drug seeking behavior” than your well-being. So rather than demand things, try to work cooperatively with the staff, even if they’re not being cooperative with you.

If you have an alert card or pamphlet explaining your condition, hand it to them and ask for it to be put in your file. For instance, I keep a card in my wallet explaining that I have Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and detailing the worst parts of the illness and information that is pertinent to an emergency. I also listed my most severe medical allergies around the border of the card in big black block letters. It’s important for the staff to know what is going to cause more pain & what may help. If you have a rare condition or one that is frequently misunderstood or which is conventionally thought to not cause pain, bring a relevant pamphlet from an awareness or advocacy group with you. Consider buying one of the brand new USB alert bracelets, pendants, or wallet cards. These plug into a computer in an emergency if you can’t speak for yourself, and they can be uploaded with as detailed medical information as you want, from medical history and current doctors with phone number and addresses to info like allergies, current medications, current medical concerns, and alternative treatments/supplements as well. Most manufacturers understand that a computer might not be nearby in an emergency and have a phone number printed on the back of the bracelet that you can call to access the information as well.

Ask for a nurse advocate or make sure someone is with you. This will help you when trying to explain things to the staff. It helps to have another person there to advocate for you.

If at all possible, use the same Emergency Department as the last one you went to, your pain will be that much more believable if you always use the same place. Plus, you might actually get doctors to take an interest in your chronic pain condition and maybe even other conditions that can cause a chronic illness patient to end up in the ER. Think about the ramifications that could have down the road for future patients!

Finally, since there are a lot of easy-to-forget details in this list, especially in the fog/panic/blacking out that happen whilst in horrific pain, I like to keep a folder handy with all those details written down, as well as a copy of most everything I need to bring with me. It isn’t always updated with the newest things I’m taking, so I bring the bottles themselves if I am on anything different since the last list was written. Being organized shows the ER team that not only do you take your condition(s) seriously, but that you have done all you possibly can to avoid the Emergency Room and to only use it as a very last resort.

About two years ago I was turned away from an ER without treatment by an extremely ignorant physician (after toughing it out all night crying and screaming at home), I had to contact and be seen by my pain doctor the next morning and then was sent right back to the same ER, only this time I was told to have them call my pain clinic when I got checked in. I did not want to go back there, but things went a lot smoother the second time, despite my apprehension. I was given the correct sedatives for once, and no one yelled at me or gave me super judgmental looks. I was treated for pain, monitored, and released without being asked to pee in a cup or otherwise treated like an addict. It was the only decent Emergency Room experience I have ever had, other than being in constant, black-out, vomiting, excruciating, unrelenting pain for almost 48 hours prior to finally receiving treatment and not sleeping a single hour of that time, all from an Occipital Nerve Block injection that was supposed to be a diagnostic tool, gone horribly wrong. (Hint: If your gut says “Do not do this, it isn’t safe” then listen to your gut, or it probably isn’t going to turn out well. I knew in my soul that the injection wasn’t going to be a good thing for me, and I don’t even have a minor fear of needles.)

I haven’t been back to the ER since, I have to admit I have stayed at home through even worse pain than that episode since then. No part of my soul trusts the Emergency Room to treat me, as a 26 year old fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome patient with occipital and trigeminal neuralgia, Spina Bifida Occulta, Joint Hypermobility Syndrome / Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, with damaged vertebral discs at the top and bottom of my spine and everywhere in between, just to name a few of my chronic pain conditions. None of that matters because what they see is a 26 year old who usually hasn’t showered in days, is twitchy and fidgety (pain makes me move nonstop sometimes), sweating profusely (a fibro symptom having to do with autonomic nervous system dysfunction or dysautonomia), has a hard time walking in a straight line, and usually I am extremely angry or panicky, one or the other. There isn’t a lot of sympathy for me if I don’t do absolutely everything right when I go to the ER.

It’s certainly not fair or acceptable, but the Emergency Room just is not cut out for dealing with us; the tough cases, the ones who can’t be “fixed” or “stabilized” because in hospital staff eyes, we are already stabilized and not in any immediate danger. Yet pain is dangerous. Chronic pain over a life time is more damaging to the actual structures of the brain than taking hardcore opiates every single day for the rest of your life. That isn’t to say that there isn’t some middle ground to be found here. I do not advise hardcore opiates for chronic pain on a daily basis, especially at my young age, because if I take heavy opiates now, years down the road when I need surgery or dose titration, eventually there isn’t anything else to elevate to by the time I’m in my late 30’s. That’s not how I want to end up. The only painkillers I currently take are tramadol and medical marijuana for breakthrough pain and seizure activity.

I have learned to make do, but it took years to figure out just how little I can do off of painkillers without my condition deteriorating. I’m still trying to adjust, trying to find the sweet spot between too much and not enough, and knowing that life with a chronic illness will always be a delicate balancing act.

I’m not just saying that heavy opiates are a bad idea, I actually used to take anywhere from two to ten 5mg oxycodone every day while I was working, and while it did not take the pain away, it made me more able to do things, more willing to put myself through pain over and over again all day long. I could still drive at that time, purely thanks to opioid medications, but I don’t think it was healthy to push so hard that I had to pop pain pills like mints, just to stay upright and not cry through my whole shift. At one point I was even on morphine every night to sleep just a couple of hours. Clinics were offering me methadone, which I vehemently turned down.

I had a rough, rough few months when my first visit with a brand new doctor ended with him taking me off oxy and morphine all of a sudden in the middle of a flare, no weaning, just completely off of opiates (and chronic fatigue/ADHD medication at the same time too) cold turkey without even the slightest heads up. I wasn’t even given tramadol by that asshole. I had to call crying in pain four times in one week before he would even write a tiny prescription for 12 (yes, one freaking dozen) during a two month long flare up! So humiliating. He also told me not to go to the ER no matter how much pain I was in. What a complete idiot. His favorite phrase was “at least you’re not in a wheelchair”. I could barely contain my hatred every time he said that or my other personal favorite: “you are a perfectly healthy young woman”. Not my weight, my blood pressure, my mental health, or my chronic pain conditions were healthy about me, so I was partly just shocked he couldn’t think of any reasons I wasn’t healthy.

Yes, middle ground. I understand that “as-needed” for a chronic pain patient can mean literally anything, from almost never to pretty much always. So I say with caution and leaning more toward the almost never side of things, “as needed” pain medication can save your life. When you need it, and you really need it, you know best, and you deserve to be treated correctly, efficiently, and even compassionately by ER staff. The above suggestions should help cut down on the emotional trauma that people with chronic pain often associate with going to the Emergency Room. In our greatest time of need, it would be nice to actually be able to count on getting help when we seek out this last resort in our coping toolbox.

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Chronic pain isn’t easy to express, not in words or pictures. I have struggled to express how chronic pain actually feels through art. My paintings are abstract multimedia pieces, and for the most part they’re just so I have something bright to look at around my house. They leave the onlooker with no idea that I suffer with every brush stroke, every adhered scrap, every swipe of the palette knife. These five artists, however, have managed to express so many of the things I feel every day, but have no idea how to show people a visual representation of.

Since I’ve been feeling particularly lousy and in way more pain than is even normal for me, I’m gonna go ahead and let this count as a blog post? I want to do a whole series on art relating to chronic illness, but we will see. I’m so disorganized!

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1. Of course, let’s start it off with Frida, who had a pain syndrome that many have speculated was fibromyalgia, as well as severe and debilitating chronic back pain which she has portrayed so clearly here. I have always loved this self-portrait, entitled “The Broken Column” even long before I developed clear symptoms of fibro:

2. The damage done to my low back from getting hit by a semi truck. Now I feel like this when my back goes out, which is kind of a lot because of the addition of Spina Bifida Occulta and Joint Hypermobility Syndrome:

3. Nerve pain, just imagine those lines about an inch underneath your skin, until it’s basically in your bones:

#Neuropathy #NervePain #NerveDamage

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4. This one reminds me so clearly of the one sided occipital migraines and trigeminal neuralgia which I am constantly dealing with:

#OccipitalNeuralgia #TrigeminalNeuralgia #OccipitalMigraines #TMJ

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5. Sad but true. This is what yoga feels like now. I am always telling my boyfriend that it feels like my spine is trying to rip clean free of the rest of my body, just like this:

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I’m not posting these for pity or for shock value, sometimes it helps me to have a visualization of my pain ,because it helps me to picture it disappearing while I meditate. Other times I just want to know I’m not alone. I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels a little bit validated when they see their chronic pain taken seriously. These artists take pain seriously, but they also managed to turn their pain into something creative. Using pain as inspiration for making beautiful things or things that others will relate to is a huge goal of mine as a formerly creative person. Illness can’t have my creativity, and these honest portrayals of the agony of chronic pain help me remember that art and the freedom it gives us is such an integral part of healing. Time to start painting again!

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Hilariously, somehow I woke up at 4am last week, sitting in my PJ’s on the side of the bathtub with a towel folded under me, the biggest heirloom tomato of the season from my garden in one hand, and my hairbrush in the other. The tomato remained unharmed, don’t worry!

Random.

I have other “sometimes” sleep problems, they crop up and go away and return mysteriously again, with no known triggers. I have sleep paralysis that feels like I am choking, and I am usually trying to scream the entire time. They usually strike during a pain flare up, which makes them extra enjoyable since being stuck in one position is excruciating!

I mumble, giggle, and “speak in tongues” according to my boyfriend. But not all the time. Sometimes I get kinda violent in my sleep and have landed a punch on my poor partner. He’s a tough guy, but apparently I hit a lot harder in my sleep than I do in real life. Hah, he’s such a saint!

Since I started taking all my meds, the sleep problems have persisted on and off for three years. Possibly it’s because of the accident I was in. Who knows. Remembering a dream is a precious precious thing with all the drugs I have to take every night in order to be able to get out of bed the next morning. I get so excited, but even when I do remember one, I can’t remember it long enough to write it down because all I can think of is what a let-down it is to still be in as much pain as I was the night before, and almost as fatigued too. Hopefully as I start to detox off the meds, I will start to dream again. And sleepwalk less!

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Yesterday I had sciatic nerve pain in combination with whole-body sensory overload, no one could touch me without making me hurt even worse for the beginning of it, and it was so bad, so overwhelming and horrific that I went into shock for almost a half hour, shaking so hard my legs were just jumping around and my teeth were clacking together. My lips and fingers turned blue. My boyfriend offered to take me to the emergency room, which never comes out of his mouth. I think it’s pretty rare when my illness is so visible that it’s not just me talking about how I feel, or moving slowly or with a limp.

I wanted to. I wanted to get wheeled into the ER, but then the thought of having to fight with some gruff doctor who may or may not eventually agree to give me something that may or may not mitigate the pain a little…. I changed my mind. Instead I opted to stay home with my herbal remedies and what prescriptions I have saved from years past and just tough it out. I couldn’t walk without screaming, but I knew I couldn’t stay put forever or I would really lock up. When the first shock-wave struck I actually stayed in one place for four hours because I was alone in the house and afraid of falling. As soon as my boyfriend made it home I made an effort to move as much as possible, screaming and all. Sometimes you gotta make noise and just do what you gotta do.

There were some scary moments, but this is a definite victory. I calmly told everyone around me to let me cry and be miserable and I could probably get through the level 10 pain to something I can manage, like a 9. They listened to me and watched me writhing around and I think they thought I would recant my previous statement and want to go to the ER eventually, but I did not cave!

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I hear it echoed over and over again by my friends, my self, and chronic illness writers across the web. The hardest part is getting those around you to understand what chronic pain takes away, not only from your physical capabilities, but cognitive abilities, focus, social functions and so many other things, too many to list. What the general public and even caretakers and close friends may not know is that chronic pain changes everything, from taking a shower to driving to thinking clearly in a meeting to not cutting a major artery in a surgery. Some days, I feel lucky to have done the dishes even if I did nothing else that day. Sometimes just surviving is overwhelming. If I can do nothing else, on my days when I am resigned to a chair or the couch, I want to help spread the word about the real bravery of the men and women who wake up each and every morning in unending, unforgiving pain. In addition, I desire so much to ease the transition for newly diagnosed patients with chronic illness through education, advocacy, and compassion. As a community of chronic pain patients one of the most pressing issues is to get a realistic, non-romanticized version out to the public of what it is like to be ill and not be able to rely on your body, or even you brain, depending on the day.

I am the same person I was before my illnesses took hold, but I am also different. I speak differently, and I speak about different things. I spend most of my day distracted by pain, and looking for a distraction from it. I am sure that the people around me no longer believe all the crazy things that are happening within my body can possibly be happening to one person, all in one month, and that is part of the stigma of chronic illness. I too didn’t understand what it meant to look fine on the outside but deal with so many problems within your body that even basic work was impossible. Five years ago, I would have pointed at someone like me and said “oh, she’s exaggerating, it can’t really be that much worse than my _____ (insert: back pain, flu, headaches, anxiety, arthritis, whiplash injury) and I worked though all of those things” but I was wrong. I was so terribly wrong that I guess life had to prove it to me in a pretty brutal way. How does that saying go? Judge not, less ye be judged?

I figured, especially because I was one of the judgmental voices, the harsh and unforgiving “them” who could never understand chronic illness, and now I understand all too well, maybe I should be one of the ones who helps shed some light on the many unseen and unspoken hurdles facing patients with a myriad of rare, invisible, incurable, and terminal illnesses. I’m honestly guilty of still trying to hold myself to standards that I cannot achieve with my illness in full force like it currently is. Hopefully in the midst of promoting acceptance and support from caregivers, relatives, friends, significant others, healthcare professionals, and the media, I can also sway some fellow spoonies to take it a little easier on themselves too. If you are dealing with daily pain that will not relent, try to gently remind yourself that you won’t gain any ground by ignoring your symptoms.

The road to being okay with your new life as someone living with chronic pain is paved with research, acceptance and acknowledgment of your symptoms. For those of you who are not in chronic pain, likewise, researching your loved one’s disease, then verbally showing acceptance and acknowledgment is the best gift you can give someone who is suffering. It is amazing what hearing the words “I believe you” can do for the soul. It is like being wrapped in a big soft blanket and having a hot cup of cocoa placed in your hands on a cold day.

Never forget that you own the right to tell your story as raw and honest as you feel comfortable with. You aren’t just doing yourself a favor by getting it out of your head and into writing, you are promoting awareness by removing the myth from your illness. Your pain may be invisible, but that does not make it any less real, any less scary, or any less debilitating than a visible injury. We spoonies all have a lot of people to prove wrong, from the 1/4 of primary care physicians who believe most of their chronic pain patients are faking, to emergency rooms that are ill-equipped to deal with chronic conditions, to unsupportive families who refuse to do their research, and of course general stigmas against pain patients that have existed for ages. These are all barriers to effective research, communication, and seeking out treatment. But they are obstacles that we as a group can overcome.

Raise your voices, tell your triumphs and your horror stories alike, others need to see what we go through on a daily basis and speaking out helps to break down those barriers and create road maps for understanding the whole of chronic illness, not just the symptoms, but the underlying causes and the body-wide effects created by living a life in constant pain. I know it is difficult, but only when we are not afraid to share what we are going through will we transform the silent suffering of people with invisible illnesses and chronic pain into a growing understanding that we too deserve to be treated with the dignity, respect and even admiration for what we deal with on a daily basis. It’s not just an idea, it’s a necessary change and we have the numbers, the intelligence, and the determination to make it happen.

Click on the thumbnail below to go to the larger version of my painting for Chronic Pain Awareness:

Chronic Pain Never Quits, let’s give the huge number of people worldwide suffering with chronic pain conditions some hope! There are many misconceptions about people with chronic pain, and these can easily become stigmatization that negatively impacts those who already suffer enough going through the daily horror of chronic pain.

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